[4] She began painting in her early teens, and studied under such notables of the period as Charles Joshua Chaplin, Jean-Jacques Henner and Carolus-Duran.

Abbéma specialized in oil portraits and watercolors, and many of her works showed the influence from Chinese and Japanese painters, as well as contemporary masters such as Édouard Manet.

[7] Abbéma was also an accomplished printmaker, sculptor, and designer, as well as a writer who made regular contributions to the journals Gazette des Beaux-Arts and L'Art.

[10] As educational opportunities were made more available in the 19th century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, including founding their own art associations.

[11] Artists then, "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives,"[12] including Abbéma who created androgynous self-portraits to "link intellectual life through emphasis on ocularity".